Transparency International: Corruption Perceptions Index

On October 26, 2010 the Guardian published the latest Corruption Perceptions Index from Transparency International which is the world's most credible source for measuring corruption.

According to Transparency International:

The 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt). These results indicate a serious corruption problem.

Download the data here.

To summarize the 2010 results:

• Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore are tied at the top of the list with a score of 9.3, followed closely by Finland and Sweden at 9.2.
• The most corrupt country is Somalia with a score of 1.1. Only slightly less corrupt are Myanmar and Afghanistan, with a score of 1.4, and Iraq at 1.5.

View the map produced by Transparency International here. While their version only contains data for 2010, my version of the map allows you to filter by continent, country or year.

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Immediately obvious to me are that:

• The rankings haven't changed much over the past three years.
• You should avoid nearly all of Africa and Asia.
• Western Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries, are relatively devoid of corruption.

I suspect that the level of corruption could be related to poverty levels, but would need to prove it with the data.

If you want to see a horribly create bubble chart from which you cannot infer anything, go to Many Eyes.